Monday, May 2, 2011

Responsibility

A comment I get pretty regularly when people find out that we unschool our children is "I could never do that! I couldn't be responsible for my child's education"

Guess what-EVERY SINGLE PARENT is responsible for the education of their child.

That means YOU. Regardless of where your child goes to school, if they go at all, the responsibility for your child lies with their primary caregivers.

I often feel insulted when people are flabbergasted that I am not "checked up on" regularly to make sure I'm not screwing my kids up. Most parents (and I say most because you only have to read a newspaper to see that there are some parents who do not have the best interests of their child in mind)want what is best for their children. When we chose to keep our children at home we did not do it with illiterate, unemployable, miserable social outcast as an end goal. The same as people who send their children to school.

Dropping your child at the school gate and picking them up 5 days a week with little other involvement in school does not ensure a happy outcome. Children who do the best and are most satisfied from institutional education do so with their family on board, being involved and active in the process.

Just as home educating families can get it wrong, so can families in the school system. Just as leaving your child to their own devices to the point of benign neglect is not unschooling, nor is using school as a babysitting service an education.

Great post Shae! There is definitely a balance to be struck by parents, no matter the location or style of education. An investment is required for kids to reach their potential.

I think a difficulty with parents being "supportive" at school, it is maybe seen as being very Type A and hard on the kids' academic performance. So maybe this is extrapolated to what it must be like to be responsible for home education. I shouldn't really go to the bat for people who offend you with their rudeness, but I honestly think they either a) don't realise what they do automatically to support their kids at school and learning everywhere, and give themselves no credit or b) they don't do what they could in either regard. Hopefully much more of A, for the kids' sake.

I think that most people just forget that they are responsible or that they even have a choice outside of public v private.

My eldest isn't even officially old enough to register yet and I've already had enough of those insulting questions and now realised that most of the time it's not about me and my choices, but how my decision to home educate makes other people feel bad or lazy or whatever their issue is.

LOL, I keep saying this to Dave - he seems to think there is some sort of conspiracy in schools to get parents to do all the teaching and often whines, "What DO they teach the kids at school if WE have to do all this work with them at home???"

I don't know what he thinks school are for, I just send my kids there because they like to go and hang out with the other kids...

I love this post. I think you are 100% right and it's a good reminder for me. When we actively decided not to homeschool it becomes tempting to leave the responsibility in the lap of the 'system'. Not for the best outcomes though. Thanks for this!

Absolutely! When peole say "wow, that's a big responsibility", I always say "yeah, so is handing your kids over to some stranger for most of their waking hours". I just don't know how people do it without a second thought!